Lloyd-23

Coriolanus is arguably Shakespeare's greatest play. I recall seeing it for the first time and being blown away by it. I thought that perhaps the Royal Shakespeare Company had altered it to make it seem more modern, but the words were the original bard's. This film sets the action in the modern world, and it does so successfully. Many of the words explaining events come in the form of televised newscasts, soldiers ride around on tanks and wear camouflage clothing, characters talk to each other on telephones, politicians wear suits, and public debates happen in television studios. All this is fine because the play's themes are so very modern.

Naturally, the film script shortens the wordiness of the play, and naturally this has the effect of heightening the importance of some aspects, while diminishing others. The screenplay puts emphasis on the character of Coriolanus' mother, and the direction and acting suggests that Tullus Aufidius is to some degree attracted sexually to the eponymous hero. One theme oddly neglected, especially given the use of television in the film, is the fickleness of the common people. The later stages of the film never involve the common crowds of Rome again.

The cast is good. The accents are a strange and unexplained mixture (Scottish, Northern Irish, English, as well as some Mediterranean ones) but this is of little consequence given that ancient Rome was probably also a mix, and the disjuncture of modern artefacts and archaic English is far greater.

Now I come to the camera-work. The picture quality is very poor. My eyes tell me that it was not shot on film. There are many scenes deliberately low-quality, made to resemble television broadcasts, but even the scenes with the highest picture quality are a vague haze of visible pixels. When I pay to go to the cinema, I expect decent picture quality, and a large screen shows up every failing. The style of camera-work is that trendy 'reality television'/documentary style which involves wobbling the camera around a lot in supposed simulation of improvisation. This is almost always overdone, and in this case in some scenes the cameraman seems to be having an epileptic fit, and the picture will probably give you less of a headache on a smaller screen (which will also not show you the pixels so clearly).

Another very annoying thing about the camera-work is that someone seems to have made the decision that a shallow depth of field is a good thing. Many of the shots are slightly out of focus, which is annoying (but will show less on the small screen). Worse, in the intense shots of actors faces in close-up, delivering key lines of dialogue, the camera should focus the mind of the audience on the expression of the actor's face and the meaning of the words he speaks. Actors move as they perform, and when the depth of field is this shallow, it becomes a great distraction that one notices that the tips of the actor's eyelashes are sharp, while the roots of them and his pupil are a blur.

I recommend this film, mainly because it showcases a terrific play which deserves to be far better known. I also recommend seeing it on DVD. Given how bad the picture quality is, I suspect that the makers thought that they were shooting for a television release of the film, and that the demands of the big cinema screen were not considered important.

*WARNING* This contains many spoliers, and should be read by people who have seen the film, or people who will appreciate my advice, which is not to see the film at all.

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When a teenager, I read 2000 A.D. magazine, which featured the exploits of Judge Dredd. For my generation, he is the equivalent of Superman or Batman. When I heard that Sylvester Stallone was to play the movie Dredd I was apprehensive. The three main things required for the part of Dredd were 1. A clear commanding voice; 2. Height (Dredd is tall), and 3. An unknown face (Dredd's face is NEVER shown in the comic – no one knows what he looks like). Stallone is famous, short, and bordering on unintelligible. Nevertheless, fans were for the most part glad that the film was going ahead, because, as we all agreed, it really would make a terrific film.

The film opens with a montage of comic covers featuring Dredd. It immediately breaks the spell which a film tries to create. How are we meant to suspend our disbelief when the first thing we are told is that he is just a fictional comic character? Also, the pictures of Dredd do not match the depiction of him in the film.

Megacity One is portrayed as the standard modern Hollywood future city, and the images derive not from the comic, but oddly from the film Blade Runner. Whereas Megacity One is depicted in the comics as a bright sunny city, with mainly rounded buildings, and with numerous fly-overs and heavy wheeled traffic, the film instead shows us a city of perpetual night, dominated by square buildings covered in neon lights and television screens, and with a constant flow of flying vehicles of many kinds.

Soon, as expected, Judge Dredd removes his helmet, and we see Stallone's face, with blue contact lenses. It is difficult to tell you how much of a no-no this is, if you have not read the comic. You might say that it doesn't matter, since it is `only' a comic. Let me try and come up with an analogy. Perhaps you know about Superman. Imagine that you went to see a film called `Superman', and you saw that Superman was played by a short blond tubby man in a mask, and that he had no cape, no S on his chest, and that he was a villain. Wouldn't this annoy you a bit?

Dredd stands trial for murder. No one asks him where he was at the time of the murder, despite this surely being rather important. As any reader of the comic would know, Dredd is almost permanently on duty, and his whereabouts could be ascertained at all times. Adding to the farce, Dredd cracks, and half-shouts half-sobs to his defence counsel `You gotta believe me!'. The scene lacks the power it would have had in the comic. In the comic, Dredd would have stood stoicly in his helmet, and when the due process of the law convicted him, he would have spoken a few laconic remarks, accepting the supremacy of the law above all, and then would have strode from the room with a dignity that would have left his sentencers feeling one inch tall.

Characters in the comic which had been long established and much reused get slaughtered out of hand in the film. Chief Judges Silver and McGruder are killed in a single burst of unnecessary gunfire. The entire Angel gang (in the comic, villains who returned a hundred times) is killed off in one quick and unconvincing fight. Chief Judge Griffin, who for the purposes of the film has been changed into a villain, also bites the dust.

Showing a rare inability with comedy, the makers give Dredd a humorous sidekick called `Fergie'. In the comic, Fergie is a gigantic and violent simpleton. In the film, he is a small wise-cracking coward i.e. about as different as possible from the original. In the comic, there are many citizen characters, and these are often quite funny, because they are so irritating and stupid. Contrasting with these, the Fergie of the film is trying to be funny all the time, but is just irritating and stupid. At one point his is hit at short range by a burst of quadruple-barrelled heavy machine gun fire. The git survives.

Dredd is dealing with a man who has committed a traffic violation. Dredd fires a grenade into the man's car and blows it up. He does this in a crowded street, endangering many passers by. In the comic, the judge next to Dredd would have arrested Dredd on the spot for reckless endangerment, destruction of property, inappropriate use of a firearm, and probably a few other offences. Mind you, in the comic, Dredd wouldn't have done anything so stupid.

For plot reasons, Rico and Dredd are identical twins in the film, with identical DNA. It is odd, then, that the two of them do not look or behave the same way. In the comic, Dredd knew that Rico was his brother, and knew that he, like almost all judges, was cloned and raised artificially. In the film, this news about Rico comes as a shock to Dredd, and he gets tearful about it, and judges are not clones, but are normal humans. This is not Dredd.

Amazingly enough, John Wagner III and Carlos Ezquerra are given writing credits on the film. Both these men worked on the comic version of Dredd, which is surprising, given all I have written above. Perhaps all that they contributed was ignored by the film makers, and they were given the credits just to please the fans. After the film came out, the value of my back issue collection of 2000 A.D. comics was cut to a third.

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First, I'd just like to say that a couple of the reviews for this film gave the ending away, which I think was very bad of them.

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Malena is a strange film, since it is about a person, Malena, whom we never really get to know. The story is told through the eyes of a teenage boy who spies on her, but who doesn't converse with her. She is a distant fantasy figure. We the members of the film's audience only know what the boy knows, and he hardly ever hears her speak. We have to share his obsession with her, and to a great extent we have to judge her much as he judges her. There are many scenes in which the heroine walks through the town ignoring all the many people watching her. This way we learn that she feels awkward under the gaze of so many eyes, but we learn little more about what she is thinking inside.

One could say that this is a central weakness of the film, but to be fair, this is also the central core of the film. It is a film about someone who's character we have to guess at. This is a weakness of sorts, but then again it is unusual, so it is a strength.

One definite weakness I felt was that we have to believe that a boy is able to spy on a woman in a town in which everybody watches everybody all the time, and that he is able to do this throughout three years of the war, without being found out. Even Malena herself never seems to suspect that he is spying on her day and night, which struck me as somewhat far-fetched.

The scenery is pretty, and the evocation of time and place fairly successful.

One thing about this film which one wouldn't get from an American film, is that it dares to depict the cruelty of women. Malena has enemies all around her, but her allies are male, and her worst enemies are the women of the town. American political correctness holds that women are fair and just, and that men are brutal bullies. This Italian film shows us more of the truth of the world than Hollywood dares to.

This is a good film, but not great. The medium of a spy's information is too detached. The story is slow, and everything conspires to make the story distant. The boy hardly speaks in the film, and instead we hear a narration all through the film, spoken by the adult remembering his far-off youth. The characters are driven mainly by necessity, and this stifles an interesting story. If a character can do many things and chooses a course which can have many outcomes, then we want to know what will happen next. This whole town is driven by expedience. The townsfolk cheer the out-going Italian troops, and cheer the in-coming American troops. With commitment like that, one doesn't care much about anything one way or the other.

Have you really never seen Brief Encounter? What have you been doing all these years? You have a treat in store.

I have a great love for British films of the 1940s. There seems to have been a great flowering of creative talent then, and the films of the period look beautiful, and have such wonderful characters in them. David Lean is more famous for his huge Technicolor epics, like Lawrence of Arabia, or A Passage to India, but Brief Encounter is his most moving film. It is shot in atmospheric black and white, and tells the story of two people who fall in love, in mundane little England.

Celia Johnston plays Laura, a middle class woman who lives a happy but predictable life, who meets Dr. Alec Harvey, played by craggy Trevor Howard. There starts a doomed love affair, set to the sweeping romantic sounds of Rachmaninov's 2nd piano concerto. This single piece of music plays throughout the film, and stirs up exactly the right emotions. The film will make you want to own a recording of the music.

Such is the power and influence of this film, that it has been remade a few times, and spoofed on countless occasions. It created the archetype for the romantic farewell on a station platform, with steam hissing from trains, and an orchestra playing in the background. Though this has been copied often, it has never been bettered. The film involves a few scenes on railway platforms, and some of these are mundane, others joyous, or despairing, wretched. The director uses many deft tricks to heighten the emotion all along the way. A simple tilt of the camera, or contrasting mood of another character, serves to add tremendous power to the emotion of the scenes.

Times were different then. People were brasher, accents were stronger, and social attitudes to affairs quite different. The period of the film gives it much of its charm. It does not make it a cold study of a different culture, however. The film is very personal. The character of Laura's husband is hardly seen in the entire film, which means that we identify more with Laura's feelings. We see the affair and next to nothing else.

Celia Johnson brings a great deal to the film. She is so likeable, and so able to express the misery that her new love brings her. Her manner of speaking is quite alien to a modern ear. In the 1940s, it was quite normal to add a Y sound to many words. "Hat" became "hyat". The accents are not forced, though - they come across as quite natural, and very likeable.

This film would not be made this way today. The modern audience would demand younger stars, and nudity. See this film to witness how it was once possible to make films about love without bedroom scenes. Brief Encounter is very much stronger for lack of these. Stoicism and restraint are under-rated traits in modern cinema. Modern directors and writers would do well to remind themselves with this film, that a story can be given tremendous emotional power by techniques which seem to have been lost.

My guess is that this film was made by idiots, because it would take an extraordinary team of geniuses to make a film this awful deliberately.

Supposedly, many people enjoy bad films, even when they know that the films are bad. I don't. This film is the glorious exception. Whereas many films are just bad and boring, this one transcends its incompetence, and presents the viewer with a spectacle of such consistent and unremitting low-quality, that one is left fighting for breath. You will be astounded that anyone capable of taking the lens cap off the camera could have considered this film worth making. This is definitely a film to be watched with many friends, and several beers.

The genre is "fantasy" of the swords and sorcery type. The plot is the usual: boy becomes wizard, joins a small party of heroes to defeat the local evil sorcerer-ruler. This is near enough the plot of all fantasy films. Powerful rulers who use magic are always evil. What sets this film apart from the tedious mass, though, is that it is enlivened throughout by jaw-droppingly abysmal dialogue, costumes, incidents and effects.

This film cannot be spoiled by "spoilers". Indeed, the only way to appreciate it is spot as many atrocious things in it as you can. Here I present some of the things to watch out for, and doubtless you and your ale-soaked friends will spot many more.

The pitiful shack in the middle of the woods, which on the inside looks like a studio set, and turns out to be the local tavern.

The bartender, clad in black, with a big ornate black sword on his back, who at first claims to be a "simple bartender" as he polishes a leather tankard, but who then starts a fight in his own tavern, before admitting that he is a "hero" (yes - that's actually the word they use!)

The villainous sorcerer, with the terrifying name of "Veneer" whose dialogue for almost all of the film consists entirely of demonic evil laughter. This man is pointlessly evil. For instance, he forbids his own population to drink from the well. WHY?

The appallingly-costumed guards around the well, who carry swords in their hands at all times, because they lack scabbards, and who fight with the speed of a pouncing limpet and the wit of kapok.

The well itself, which consists of a stone wall encircling some water. The water actually comes up to the rim of the well-head, suggesting that the local water-table is three feet above ground level.

The gladiators fighting inside an arena which is simply a high wooden fence enclosing a circle of ground. Why are they fighting? No one can see them.

The "hero" they happen across in the well-lit dungeon, who, on being freed from his bonds, finds his sword nearby on the floor. This man rescues three girls from a cell. These all look like cheer-leaders and all have shampooed and blow-dried hair, as well as zips up the backs of their dresses.

The fight between two monsters. Each is rather obviously a man in a costume. One clue is the bare arms revealed occasionally during the struggle, as the make-up doesn't go all the way up the actors' arms, and the sleeves of their shirts are rather short. Both monsters drop dead simultaneously, without a mark visible on either.

The moment when it is suggested that the heroes incite revolt. Immediately the scene cuts to some footage, very obviously taken from another film, of many people fighting each other apparently at random.

The shop which has a window, but no door. The "merchandise" is a few paltry things on the windowsill. Saving on building a door, the scene cuts to the interior.

The "secret passage" which is huge, easy to find, and leads straight into the dungeons of the villain's stronghold.

The moment when the villain has magically adhered some peoples' feet to the floor, and he gloats and walks not just to within easy punching distance of them, but actually between them, and within punching distance of both.

I have not seen Wizards of the Lost Kingdom, but it seems to be in a similar league of inspired dreadfulness. I believe that there was even a third in this series of films. I am agog at the brazen cheek of anyone who could commission a follow-up to this film with a straight face. If these films were commercially successful, it was not because their makers knew what they were doing.

The idea is that there are four separate quarters to the screen, each showing the footage of a different camera. I had expected that I would get four different stories, each featuring one character, each woven cleverly together. I was massively disappointed. The cameras do not stay with one character. There are not four strong stories. Instead, there are a dozen or so very weak stories, each of which could be told in one sentence, and would not be found interesting. The bottom left quarter, for the first half an hour or so, shows the security guard and what he gets up to. None of what he does turns out to be relevant, or interesting, and this screen quarter then goes on to follow other characters. One screen quarter shows us someone eavesdropping on someone else. For about an hour, we see this person reacting to what she hears, with the same anxious look.

All the way through, one finds oneself looking at the most promising-looking screen quarter, in the hope that one might see something interesting or informative. This generally proves futile. While doing this, however, one occasionally catches a glimpse of something in another quarter, and then, on looking at that other quarter, one then wonders what it was that one has just missed, and whether it might have been relevant. I saw a character in a bookshop put a book in her bag. Had she stolen it? I don't know. Either way, it proved to be of no consequence whatsoever.

The film opens with a woman talking, at great, and boring, depressing length, about nothing much in particular, to her shrink. This is not a good start for a film. The sound keeps fading up and down from each quarter, suggesting to the viewer that the events in one quarter are more important at that time than in the others. However, very often, the sounds in the other quarters interfere; very often, the louder sound is still uninteresting; and always, the sound is never loud or clear enough to be easy to listen to. I spent the entire film wishing that people would speak up.

Had Tom Stoppard or Alan Aykbourne written this film, it would perhaps have been excellent. They would have picked an interesting hour and a half, in which several complete stories intermeshed, and were acted out in real-time. Instead, we have an hour and a half of people feeling a bit low, browsing in bookshops, having dull business meetings, listening to headphones, smoking, and walking about in the street. It seems that the director feared to put four interesting things on the screen, for fear that each would distract from the others, so he gave us four mundane and dull ones instead. These do not add up to one interesting picture.

True, there are half a dozen amusing bits, but these fall a long way short of making this an entertaining film.

It is at least good to see that Figgis has put his efforts where his mouth was. Years ago I met him at a writers' workshop at the Tyneside Cinema, and he said then that people should make feature films with DVD cameras, and that these films would be successful because they would put content and originality above high-production gloss. Snag is, he has made a film almost perfectly devoid of interest. It is hard work to watch, and low reward.

There are some amazingly good-looking women in it, but again, this is no substitute for plot or incident, or even half-decent dialogue.

Figgis has damaged his cause. The public will be less likely to go and see a film shot cheaply on video, thanks to this one.

This film is not a feature film. For a start, it is not feature length, also, it is not shot on film. More importantly, it does not have what feature films have these days: star actors, special effects, exotic locations, explosions. Instead, seeing B.W.P. is seeing something else that a cinema can be: a place where people can share an intimate experience created by a few people on a tight budget. I would be glad of its success if only for that reason.

The first section of the film appears at first to be amateurish and slow. In fact, it is very deft, and very efficient at what it does. It tells the audience everything it needs to know about the characters and situation, and nothing more. Also, it gets the audience into the habit of viewing the film's format: alternating between black and white (very grainy and poorly focussed) film, and the washed out colours of shaky pixilated video. The film makers managed to set up a rationale for why the film is so cheaply made. Three people hike into the woods for a few days to shoot a documentary, with borrowed equipment, and are in the habit of videoing everything for the hell of it. They cannot carry tripods, steadicams, dollies, large lighting rigs, or the like, so everything we see is lit either by raw daylight, or by a single light fixed to the camera, which illuminates just what is within a few feet of the lens. The film creates its own excuse to be cheap. This is intelligent.

The acting and script are both excellent. The well-cast actors are presumably playing pretty-much themselves, and are convincingly naturalistic, and neither too likeable or too dislikeable. The slow route into hysteria is well documented. Rather than simply having a character say "We're lost!", we see many scenes which show the trio getting more and more hopelessly lost, and more annoyed with each other for this. By the time they are thoroughly lost, the audience shares the despair.

My friend and I, after seeing it, both felt a little sick. I put this down to my having been tense for a hour, he put it down more to motion sickness. The jerky, badly-framed camerawork is hard on the eye and stomach, but I applaud the director for its uncompromising use. Similarly, no compromise is made with the dialogue. Some of it is very quiet and must be listened for, some is technical jargon, which is left realisticly unexplained.

One of the great strengths and weaknesses of the film is the editing. It is good in that it does much to heighten the tension, with many key moments lasting just a little too long for comfort. Each time the characters find something nasty, the viewer is made to want the editor to cut soon to the next scene, and the fact that he doesn't adds to the sense of being trapped, as the characters are. The problem with this, though, is that one is left wondering about the motives of the fictional editor. In truth, of course, the film is edited to create these effects, and to entertain, but the film's rationale is that these are the rushes of a documentary put together posthumously by someone other than the film's original creator. Why, then, would an editor piecing together such footage, edit for dramatic effect rather than for clarity? Why would he keep cutting back and forth from the video footage to the film footage, when neither shows any more information than the other?

The film is stark. After one simple caption at the start, all that follows is the "rushes". I wonder if the film might not have been improved with an introductory section which documented how the rushes were found and edited. A programme was made for television which did this. Perhaps a portion of this might have been added to the film, making it more complete, and more believable (and proper feature length).

While I applaud the fact that young original film-makers have managed to create a mainstream hit out of a simple idea, well-handled. I dread the possible avalanche of inferior copies which may come.

Most horror films these days are created not for the audience, but for the makers. The departments of special effects, make-up, model-making, animation and so forth all try hard to show potential future employers what they can do. The result is that nothing is left for the audience to do, since everything can be seen and heard, and the viewer's imagination can be switched off. Today, it is possible to see pigs fly on the screen, and so film-makers show off and show us a formation of Tamworths, which is something which will look impressive in the trailer. To show us less is to make our minds fill in the gaps. This way, we create our own terrors, perfectly fitted to ourselves. The ghastly face I see in my head, is the ghastly head which I find scary. The ghastly face I am shown may be one I can cope with quite easily. If I see a believable character screaming in hysterical fear at something I cannot see, my own brain creates demons for my night's dreams, demons far more mighty than anything CGI graphics or a latex mask could portray.

This film will stay in your thoughts for some while.

The Shooting Party is set in 1913, which is not very long ago, and yet is another world. This was the last year of the old world, and the start of the modern world. The opening narration by James Mason sets the theme: that the world of the haves and have-nots is doomed, and that the future holds great change.

This was Mason's last film, and his was a part very well suited to him. He is the great patriarch, head of the family, and benign chief of the great estate. He is not a soppy fool, but he is kind and means well to all. He invites many aristocrats to his estate for a few days of shooting, and these arrive, with their servants.

In the house, then, are representatives of much of the world at that time: the upper classes, some British, some foreign, and the lower classes, some servants, some local rustics who will be the beaters for the shoot. The film then shows us how they are all behaving.

Both the upper and the lower classes are stuck in their ways, though if anything, it is the upper class which questions whether this is the way things should be. When the shooting pauses for tea, the posh folk sit elegantly but uncomfortably in a clean white marquee, and drink from china, while the beaters look far happier drinking from mugs from a communal urn and chatting amongst themselves.

The foreign aristocrats are haughty, and annoy the British by referring to the beaters as "peasants". The British aristocrats are not happy. Two young idealists are in the agony of a forbidden love, others have sham marriages or petty rivalries.

The world is one full of love, but much of it frustrated. A boy has a pet duck, which he fears will be shot. Mason has a liking for a local poacher whom he hires as a beater, despite the contempt which the hunt master has for the man. By the end of the film, you feel great liking and sympathy for many of the characters.

To get the most from this film, some knowledge of history and British culture is required, but there is much to like in this film without these. The acting and dialogue are good, the setting atmospheric, and what is being said about the people of the time is so very fair. This film does not hammer home any of its points, but shows both the good and the bad in the characters, and lets the viewer decide.

All through the film, our present-day knowledge of the slaughter to come in the churned mud of the Somme, Ypres, Paschendale and the Dardenelles stays with us, affecting the way we perceive every nuance. The film makers were clearly aware of this, and take full advantage of it.

The ending is one of the most moving I know from any film. Simple, yet very effective.

More people telling me their favourite film, have named Excalibur, than have chosen any other film. People tend to feel strongly about this film. I can remember that when it came out, a film magazine reviewed it twice, feeling that it had to do so, since its two reviewers had such contrasting opinions. In short, people who don't adore it, tend to hate it.

Those who hate it have failed to understand something very important: that it is set in the land of dreams. Excalibur makes no attempt to be realistic. It is the film of a legend, and it tries to create a world of legend, and it succeeds. Once one has realised that this is not the real world, then the film is internally consistent and works splendidly. Merlin, towards the end of the film, even says the line "Your love brought me back to where you are: in the land of dreams." If anything, this makes the film even more tragic, because all of Arthur's sufferings have been not for his world, but for ours.

The Arthurian legend is probably the world's best legend. It has been told a thousand different ways, but is so strong, that no retelling can harm it. The story is familiar, but this telling of it is not. The screen starts blank, with the distant drums of Seigfried's Funeral March playing, and after a few captions, the curtain lifts to reveal a stunning opening sequence with horses breathing fire-lit breath into the night air, as Uther's men do battle with those of the Duke of Cornwall. The armour is dark, and greenish, and the movements slow, making this seem like a scene of battling dinosaurs. It is brutal and bloody. These are the dark ages. This is the time of chaos from which Arthur's kingdom must come. Into the scene, in a cloud of swirling fog, comes a figure who will be present throughout the film, ageless and mysterious, Nicol Williamson's Merlin, whose voice carries over the din.

I remember how suddenly I found myself immersed in this world when I first saw the film, and even now the hairs stand up on the back of my neck thinking about it. Allow yourself to become involved with the film, and you will be rewarded.

The costumes are magnificent. Special mention must go to the shining armour, and Morgana's (Helen Mirren) ever-increasingly impressive series of outfits. The music is stirring (it uses "O Fortuna" from Carima Burana before this had become a cliche). The acting is theatrical and good. Each of these characters is on a stage, to be examined. This is not a film of quiet intimate moments. It is a legend, and legends are public.

Excalibur distills the Arthurian legends into one film of watchable length very cleverly. At several points during it, a clever cut tells the viewer that several years have passed. Single characters represent many things. At one point Sir Percival represents all the questknights, at another Morgana is all that is evil. In telling the story quickly, the film uses simple direct speeches. In one scene, Arthur visits Guinevere, the woman he loved deeply, whom he hasn't seen for many years. He spends just a minute in her company and leaves, and yet the speech he delivers to her is so complete and so moving, that you do not feel robbed. He says his piece and leaves, needing to say no more.

It is true that the film has dated a little. Some of the hair-styles and special effects are not quite what they would be today, and the quality of the dubbing is not first-rate, but this is still stunning. Everything seems to have come together to help this film look and sound good. The skies over the castles are spectacular, the Irish landscape (it was shot there) looks the part. The visual imagination and daring to have Camelot as a castle literally made from silver, and to have Arthur's final battle fought in fog with a huge blood red sunset behind it, makes this a feast for the eye.

I am writing about one of my all-time favourite films. I cry every time I see the land burst into blossom as a reborn Arthur gallops through it, and I feel the heavy warmth of tragedy as he is carried off towards the sunset to the Isle of Avalon. I am spoiling nothing by telling you that Arthur dies in the end. Everyone knows that he dies in the end. The whole film is leading to that moment. When you reach the end of the film, ask yourself this: where did he go wrong? What was it he did to lose his wife, his son, his sister, his best friend, all his questknights, Merlin, his kingdom, his life - everything he held dear?

"The one god of the many comes to drive out the many gods. The spirits of wood and stone grow silent. It is a time for men and their ways." That's it.

The Python team succeeds in doing something which very few people can do. What's more, it makes it look easy. One moment they are making a very clever joke, which takes a lot of understanding, which makes many references to culture and history, and which makes a very good point, and the next joke in the script is "Shut up, Big Nose!" All the way through, this pattern is repeated, and all the way through, both kinds of joke are very funny.

The pace never lets up, and it moves from one excellent sequence to another, each one advancing the plot (with the probable exception of the bit with the space ship). Along the way, one sees several classic moments which have since been much copied. Where were they first? In this film. "What have the Romans ever given us?", "Splitter!", "Alms for an ex-leper!" - if you don't see this film, then you will be missing out on some important popular culture.

The cast is excellent, and each of the Python team plays several roles, sometimes even having to do reaction shots to shots of themselves playing other parts. This sort of ensemble casting is sadly rare in films, being a sort of theatrical ploy, and yet in this film it feels entirely natural.

The film looks very good. In fact, it is probably the most visually convincing depiction of life in a biblical city I have seen. The Python team is made up of educated men, and these went to some effort to see that the costumes and sets, and atmosphere were up to scratch. This re-enforces the comedy, and greatly re-enforces the profound elements of the film.

There is a central message to this film, summed up in Brian's hilarious and desperate speech to the multitude which has gathered ("'Popped by'? Swarmed by, more like!") outside his window. It is that people should not follow religions like blind sheep, but should think for themselves. Few more worthwhile and sound messages could be preached by anyone. Don't take my word for it, though, decide for yourself.

Along the way, many other points are made, each highlighting the petty-mindedness of humans. This film comes highly recommended for viewing by the young. It could be a good influence on them, I hope, and can make them only more reasonable and tolerant adults, assuming that they don't die young of an excess of laughing.

There are only two films which always leave me wanting to see them again immediately: Gregory's Girl, and Life of Brian. As soon as the end credits roll, I have the strong urge to rewind the tape and see it all again.

"And there shall be a Man... and he shall lose his hammer, and think that's very odd, because he could remember exactly where he put it only the night before... about eight o'clock." That's the sort of prophet I like.

Star Wars is one of the all-time classic movies which people love. The Empire Strikes Back is a lot weaker, has no pace, no form, and no satisfactory ending (but great music), and Jedi pushed Mark Hamill's acting ability beyond breaking point, and involved Ewoks (my friends all like the bit when the walker trod on a few of them). Phantom Menace had a lot to follow.

First, a comment of the SFX. They are good. Though computer animation still usually looks like computer animation, it has to be admitted that this is about the best to be done so far. The character of Jar Jar Binx (a few shots excepted) is better animated than the human cast. Alas, though, many of the special effects are gratuitous, the most obvious example of this being the underwater journey through the core of the planet - a wholly silly sequence.

This film contains several revelations which I did not like about THE FORCE. Whereas Obi Wan in Star Wars told us that The Force surrounds all living creatures, in this film we find a creature immune, for plot reasons, to The Force. Also, a few times the "Will of The Force" is mentioned. This suggests that THE FORCE is an intelligence, like a monotheist god, and that this intelligence has desires and plans. Surely it is better to have TF as something which people can use to good or evil, an energy source which a few talented people can make use of. If TF is all-powerful and has a will, then surely the events we are seeing are all pre-destined and the characters merely puppets.

Anakin Skywalker, played by a child with a wildly over-cute face, is introduced to us as a mechanical genius. For some reason, it was thought a good idea to have him as the creator of C3-PO (so why didn't Darth Vader recognise him in the later episodes?), and as the builder of a tremendously fast racing machine. Surely it would have been far better to have him with a strange social influence. I'd have had him as the leader of a huge gang of children, many older than he, who all look out for his welfare, as their benign dictator. Surely The Force has more effect on hearts and minds than on circuitry.

The pod race is just an inferior Ben Hur, with a silly two-headed commentator. Nothing very clever happens.

Some say that the film is too obviously talking about the current real-world situation. The Evil Trade Federation represent the Japanese, Corruscant and the Senate represent the USA, and Naboo represents Europe. This is a fair point, and perhaps the film would have been better if such interpretations did not fit so well.

On the plus side, it is EPIC, with impressive locations and a cast of thousands. The sheer amount of design involved is staggering. Huge numbers of creatures, buildings, costumes, and objects needed to be designed for this film. Much of the design is good, and all the design is impressive because there is simply so much of it. I for one liked the political plot in the senate, which is not what I or many others were expecting. This side of it was quite mature and interesting, although I doubt that the kiddiwinks would appreciate it much, but they have plenty to like, as there are lots of explosions.

A definite low point is that the baddies are not very menacing. The robots who die in droves do not look frightening (I love the design of the Star Wars storm-trooper uniforms), and move with daft slowness (and why didn't they have rubber soles to their feet for grip and quietness?), and so are just not at all scary. They are even worse at shooting than the storm-troopers from the earlier films. Whereas Darth Vader was an excellent villain, who appeared early on in Star Wars, who had lots of good powerful and evil dialogue, and who did much to shape events, instead we have Darth Maul, who has nothing to say, and is nothing more than a fighting machine.

The Jedi are central to this film, and are alas one of its weaker points. Obi Wan and his master are very dull characters, and all suspense and mystery about them is thrown away. After seeing Obi Wan use super-human agility, we are required to fear for him when he is hanging off a walkway. The Jedi in council (all male, so far as I can tell) are shown as vague and indecisive, and Yoda's eyes still don't seem to focus on anything, as though they were made of lumps of glass.

Overall, I'd say that any Star Wars fan should see it, and it does set up the next film pretty well. I want to see what happens next. There are many niggling little flaws in it, some bits don't make sense, others are very predictable, but one would be missing out of a piece of world culture to miss it.

By writing this, I am hoping that I will save people a lot of time and money. Last night I went with a friend to see Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick's final masterpiece. Supposedly, he had wanted to make this film for twenty-seven years, and spent sixty-seven weeks shooting it, an incredible amount of time for a commercial film. Being the sort of mug film buff that I am, I thought that I should go to see a film made by an acknowledged master, who had spent so much time getting it just right.

When the film finally ground to a halt, the audience in the cinema stood up and as one started muttering things like "Is that it?", "Thank goodness that's over" "Well, you can see why there are only two showings per day", "What a pile of ****". I have never heard a cinema audience respond so negatively to a film before. We talked about it, and we had not a single kind word to say about it. I have thought about it since, and find it void of redeeming features.

It is badly photographed. The sets are often unconvincing. The acting is mediocre. The continuity is poor. The lighting is awful. The picture quality is poor. It looks as though it was shot on 16mm, and the prints were made at Boots. Hardly anything happens which is believable. There are gaping holes in the plot. Worse than all the above, it is incredibly slow. At no point does the pace quicken. It is wildly too long. Every single conversation happens at a snail's pace. Almost every conversation is punctuated by very long awkward pauses. It seems as though Stanley thought about every scene so much in isolation, that each scene took on great significance, and to get the importance of what was happening across, he dwelt on every word and action. Every scene could be halved in length and lose nothing and gain much.

I was expecting a film in which Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise play roughly equally large parts. The film is almost entirely about the Tom Cruise character. I was expecting an intelligent exploration of jealousy and relationships and the like. Instead we get half way to a thriller, but not all the way, not enough to make it interesting, and there is no intelligent comment on human nature, nor, so far as I can tell, on anything.

This film takes itself so amazingly seriously, and yet is transparently ludicrous from start to finish. Human beings don't behave like that. Nothing made sense. Characters kept acting on information which they didn't have. The various parts of the world were not using the same clock. The sun kept rising and falling at odd times, and characters would go back to somewhere they'd been the day before, to find that no one there had moved, changed clothes, or even finished what they were saying.

Yes, there is a bit of nudity in it, but this is presented in scenes of such unnecessary length, and such little incident, that you just wish they'd get on with the next scene.

Having more recently spoken to several other people who saw it, I have encountered near-uniform condemnation of this shamefully bad film. One person fell asleep during it several times. One had to apologise to the five people who went with her to see it, who all hated it (it had been her idea to go to see it). Only two people reportedly enjoyed it, but they enjoyed it solely because they thought that it was so bad that it was funny. I say that it is too dull and slow to be found entertaining that way.

I would thoroughly recommend this film to people I intensely dislike.